Creating the Creative License Hi Reader: It’s been twenty years since I wrote one of my favorite books, The Creative License: Giving yourself permission to be the artist you truly are. Perhaps you’ve read it. I wrote the book at a transitional point in my life: I had recently been fired for the first time, from a job I’d hated — as the Chief Creative Officer of an ad agency — but which was, to that point, the peak of my advertising career. Despite this indignity, I had a nice contract to...
4 days ago • 2 min read
I started drawing late. Not when I was in high school or art school but around the time I got my first grey hairs. It’s tempting to think that’s too late to learn new skills, that I could never make art meaningfully if I started at a mature age. But I’ve come to realize that coming to art later in life might not just be a viable alternative. It might actually be a tremendous advantage. Here’s what I’m thinking. I’ve lived more. When I was younger, I just hadn’t done that much. I hadn’t...
8 days ago • 5 min read
Experimenting with tempera Hi Reader: While reorganizing my studio, I came across a box of a dozen tempera sticks. I have no idea where they came from. Were they a gift from a reader? A sample from a manufacturer? They had been in a drawer for ages, and I’d never used them once. I had just bought a new set of toned sketchbooks from UglyBooks, and their colorful pages begged for experimentation with media. I tried out colored pencils and paint pens, and then I remembered those tempera sticks....
11 days ago • 3 min read
Do you have a style? You say you don’t? Think again. Your style is part of everything you make —it's you on paper. Your personality, your point of view, your taste, just like your handwriting or the way you dress. It’s in every line. Your style is as innate as the quirks you're born with. But you've got to bring it out, sharpen it, and focus it by using it over and over. Each brushstroke and sketch brings it into clearer focus. You don’t wait to "find" your style before you start creating;...
15 days ago • 2 min read
💖 Stuff I like: July Hi Reader: 🏞️ Mid-Century Master Chris Turnham makes amazing landscape illustrations evoking classic illustrations of the 50s and 60s. He sells affordable digital prints, but the screen prints are reasonable and gorgeous too — up to 12 layers of handprinted goodness. Link. His IG has lots of process videos, too. Instagram 👴🏻 Back to the bullpen. If you remember paste-up, rub-down type, photostats, and all the accouterments of the good old days of pre-digital design...
18 days ago • 1 min read
A few days ago, someone wrote in to our website to ask what it is I actually teach. She wanted to know what the style is called because she has taken a lot of art lessons and they all apparently have labels that describe what it is, what school of art they belong to, I guess. I swallowed hard. Someone was finally calling my bluff. They were on to the fact that I'm not a real artist, let alone a real art teacher. I wrote the following to explain my way out of this corner. I hope I don’t sound...
22 days ago • 2 min read
Non-bleed markers Hi Reader: If you've seen Mad Men with its three-martini lunches, you know that alcohol seemed to fuel those good old days of advertising. In my case, though, the alcohol was in my markers. When I first started out as a copywriter, I didn’t really need art supplies—just an IBM Selectric typewriter. I was supposed to be writing body copy and taglines, not sketching storyboards. But man, did I want those markers. I pestered my boss until he finally gave in. The next thing I...
25 days ago • 5 min read
My brain, like my other body parts, needs to exercise. So, I set up little challenges to keep it limber and lithe (wish I did the same for my solar plexus). While wallowing in the pool yesterday morning, musing about Forest Gump, I gave the old necktop computer the following challenge: Come up with ten more ways life is like a box of chocolates. Ever the overachiever, my brain came up with a round dozen. You don’t want it to end. It’s meant to be shared. If you wait too long to enjoy it, it...
29 days ago • 1 min read
Tales of Fire and Ice. Hi Reader: It's easy to fill a sketchbook when I'm on a trip to some exotic land. But there are thrills and drama in ordinary life, too, and this sketchbook has a few. It begins with a fire in my sketchbook! In my endless haste, I began drying watercolors in our microwave oven. Generally, this worked pretty well, and in a few seconds, the water evaporated, and the page was dry. However, I had begun playing around with gold leaf (I showed that in abundance in the...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read